atlanta arts tagged interest

Art Papers has been publishing since 1976, much of that time on a knife’s edge of survival. Last year, the organization decided it was time to end the struggle.

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Editor’s Note: This article is the first in an occasional series of articles we’re calling “The Crux.” This series will explore artists, organizations and others who are at a crossroads or are facing a significant redefinition or change of direction. Our hope is that these stories will provide models for how to deal with the life changes that eventually come to us all.

In a small office in Little Five Points, the Art Papers staff is busy planning their upcoming art auction. A whiteboard depicts a flowchart, and colorful sticky notes line the wall. Around the office are boxes filled with the magazine’s archives. Past issues sit open on tables, often flipped through for inspiration and for selecting articles to republish online.

Art Papers, a nonprofit, contemporary art magazine, holds an art auction that brings together curators, donors and artists each year. This year, the event, titled “IGNITE: A Curated Art Papers Auction,” will look a little different from previous years. Not only will it use traditional paper bids instead of the electronic systems used in the past, it will host 150 guests and feature 25 artworks — a departure from previous years’ 1,200 guest count and 300 artworks.

“We decided to do something smaller, more intimate, tied to the advice and knowledge of a group of curators who support our work and represent a variety of different backgrounds — and to have them select artists that they want to champion in this context and make sure that these artists are getting in front of a group of enthusiastic collectors,” said Executive and Artistic Director Sarah Higgins.

“Right now, we’re just getting ready to pack up all this artwork that’s ready to go to the venue,” Higgins says.

Since 1976, with the mission of creating a community for local artists and connecting them to the broader contemporary art discourse in other cities, Art Papers has published criticism, interviews and artist work that engage in conversation about art in a social context. The organization has also hosted live arts programming. In November 2023, after years of financial hardship, the board and staff of Art Papers made the decision to set a timetable for its own closure. The current strategic plan calls for the continuation and development of specific programming over the course of three years, culminating in a slow, controlled stoppage of operations in 2026, at the 50-year anniversary mark.

Though the organization is slowly approaching the conclusion of operations, work is anything but at a standstill, with the publication of new articles, the republishing of articles from the archives and new programming in the works.

The changes at the publication through the years included a shift from a bimonthly to quarterly schedule in 2017 and a shift from print to digital in 2023. The closure announcement accompanied Higgins’ appointment to her current role, prior to which she had served as editor and artistic director since 2019. Higgins recalls the pandemic as being the critical catalyst that forced them to assess the future of the publication. While budget cuts and grants kept them afloat during that time, it brought to the surface wounds that were deeply systemic in nature: funding at the state and local level.

“If what we wanted to find was financial security, we would need to either emulate models that are already out there being done or become something that felt like a departure from our core mission or identity that would be something entirely different than Art Papers. And that was an intense crossroads to reach,” Higgins said.

Higgins said the legacy of Art Papers is intrinsically tied to print, and maintaining a digital-only format in the long run would cast the magazine into a category already occupied by many publications. On the other hand, feedback from donors proposed a shift to writing that had to do more with the art market. The final decision offered a third option.

“What if, instead of pretending everything was fine until suddenly announcing it was over, we became really transparent that the organization is not something with a reliable path toward sustainability and used that transparency and vulnerability to create a model for a thoughtful, intentional landing?” Higgins asked.

The intention is to use programming to better understand the very issues causing this shutdown, a regenerative approach that is in line with the “fire ecology” metaphor Higgins has used. In this approach, controlled forest fires are seen as a tool to maintain a healthy forest ecology by fertilizing the soil for future growth. Likewise, Art Papers’ leadership hopes to use the controlled dismantling of the organization to encourage the future growth of new organizations.

Art Papers has explored the issues faced by nonprofits through the years with a curated collection of articles titled “Special Issue on the Alternative Arts Press.” Upcoming programming will include community talks and a national symposium in 2025, centered around arts writing and publishing. Higgins hopes for the programming to acknowledge the issue faced by the nonprofit arts sector and also to explore case studies of successful models. She hopes it will encourage discussion of how best to compensate artists for their work, while providing engaging programming for an audience.

Art Papers will have a booth at the Atlanta Art Fair on October 6, featuring a selection of rare archival issues of the magazine and custom-printed T-shirts. In November, Art Papers will present a series of talks about Atlanta’s art ecosystems developed from discussions with the city’s art leaders. The plan culminates in the publication of a retrospective book celebrating Art Papers’ 50-year history in the winter of 2025 or 2026.

“Our programming is held together with passion and unpaid overtime,” said Higgins. “And this has created a false sense that these things are surviving when it’s taking a larger and larger toll. And, as we move through a cultural moment, where artists and art workers and workers in general are very rightly demanding that their labor be compensated at a rate at which they can live and be safe, that precarity is showing even more. As we are held more and more accountable to the way we compensate people, the bottom line doesn’t change. So we’re at a real pressure point.

“The question is one of audience. Do we have an audience here that values what we do enough to support it such that it is sustainable? I think it’s a question for Atlanta. How much do you value this? And what do you value about it?”

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Mitali Singh is an Atlanta-based writer who is passionate about exploring the intersections between the arts and culture. She is currently a student at Emory University, studying English and creative writing. Her poems have been published in Eunoia Review and FEED.